Hello Michael,

I hope is OK to comment directly in your blog entry. I wanted to just throw in some ideas directly related to this topic.

First and perhaps foremost, I like to have in mind that our current physical theories are far from complete, which means that questions like this are likely to have answers around rather than within contemporary physics.

Additionally, I personally do no suscribe at all to the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, so I try not to think too much in terms of a superposition of states and a collapse into just one. However, I might say that my problem is only with the details of the selection process, so to speak, since I do strongly think that subatomic particles act out of a selection of one concrete action out of a set of possibilities.

I'm also totally inclined towards the "simulation-like models", specially the "vibratory" ones. 
That is.... the idea that the ontologically real elements of the universe are not directly the subatomic particles, but rather, that these physical objects are phenomenological entities, operated by the (ontologically) real objects. Kind of like the letters in this blog comments, they show up here because I type them, but the real actor (me) hides behind the curtains.

Additionally, I like the so-called vibratory models (such as string theory, or quantum field theory), in which the reification of the phenomenological entities (such as an electron) comes about the interactions of fields (and it is the source fields the stuff the real actors operate on to reify the physical particles).

Furthermore, in this view, all real actors are spirits, but of different vibratory capacities and modes, so they operate the "material source fields" differently, and hence are seen to connect or not with matter.

---

An interesting idea that draws from simulation models is that, if the physical particles are not directly the real stuff, which means that there are at least two layers: the ontologically real elements---spirits--at the bottom, and the phenomenological elements (electrons and such), at the top... then maybe there are other layers. And these possible other layers may contain the (still phenomenological) hemi-physical matter that exists according to several spiritual belief systems (and Alien channeled messages).

In any case, it seems that the degrees of freedom--or possibilities--of action, for subatomic particles, specially electrons (and their "virtual twins", the photons) are the most likely to offer the plug for connection of ethereal signals, much as you said here Michael. 

---

From a different angle, I am absolutely convinced that there really is something special, or extra, about organic matter that separates it from inorganic one, and that it is this difference what makes organic matter so much connectable to ethereal components, even if, from a reductionist point of view, there isn't any such difference.
There is the fact that the electron molecular orbitals in organic compounds are far more sophisticated than the molecular orbitals in inorganic compounds. Connecting this to the "quantum freedom of action" discussed before, one might think that organic matter provides the electrons with the "many metastable quantum states" that Michael mentioned, which would explain why "animated" matter is organic.

However, I don't think that the key to the "animism" of organic matter is just the sophisticated electron orbitals. That is surely a part of the equation, but I think there is something else. Literally, I mean, something else:

According to the belief system of my church, every physical thing (a quark for example) is a system made of both physical and ethereal components. The physical components carry the actions and the ethereal components directs them. Just as it is found in us, human beings, the same duality is found even in the simplest of the physical particles (such as quarks). BUT, here is the interesting part: when physical elements combine to make a composite (3 quarks making an electron, or atoms making a molecule, or cells making a tissue), then resulting ethereal part of the composite is literally--mathematically--more than the sum of the parts. That is, the more complex the composite, the more extra ethereal components it gets. 
In this view, a crystal, for example, is quite literally not just a bunch of carbon atoms arranged in a funny way, and not just because of the way in which the electrons within the crystal can operate, but also, and more importantly, because the crystal contains "crystal-level" ethereal components.

Interestingly, while the above is just the believes in my church, there now exists a recent fringe physical theory known as "Neppe-Close Triadic Dimension Vortical Paradigm (or TDVP in short). They postulate the existence of a new sort of non-physical particle, named gimmel, which tags along and it is a constituent part of every physical entity. As you might expect, according to their calculations, organic matter has a much much higher amount of gimmel particles than inorganic matter or isolated atoms (also electrons have much more gimmel than protons and neutrons). There is remarkable parallel between the gimmel in TDVP and the "ethereal part of any physical matter" in my church's believes.

What this means for ITC is that I would imagine the best ITC devices to be biological, even if at the very bottom, it is the electrons the ones providing the "plugs" for the connections to be made.

Considering that we are barely scratching the surface of biological technology (not as in drugs but as in purely functional devices), I think we are way too far from that... in the meantime, I would agree with Michael in trying to come up with (in my words, but the same idea if I understood correctly), devices having an "atomic arrangement" maximizing the "quantum freedom of action" of the electron orbitals; but also maximizing the non-physical components of the device (you might say the gimmel count if we would use the TDVP). 
Crystal arrays seem like a good starting choice, but... this is completely off the top of my head, but I believe that a specially designed, resonating electronic circuit, might be functionally similar to an organic molecule in the sense of having, in the complete system, holistically, a non-physical counter-part specifically conditioned and in charge of ITC phenomena, exploiting the electronic freedom of action of the circuit.